Gone are the days of randomly posting updates to your social media marketing channels and you seeing a lot of engagement from it. There are way too many businesses (both small and large) absolutely crushing it on social media today. The main differences between the businesses that are increasing engagement on their social media channels vs. those that are complaining that social media marketing doesn’t work, is that the ones crushing it. All have a strategic social media marketing plan in place. Don’t get me wrong here, we’re always going to have the silver bullet companies that explode onto the social media marketing scene, but these are not the norm, and in fact, some say, the faster the rise, the faster the fall. So for your business, you may just want to stick with the basics and take the first step in forming a long term, strategic social media marketing plan. What Is A Strategic Social Media Marketing Plan Here’s two example to help get your head wrapped around what I mean by putting a strategic social media marketing plan in place. Example one: get a big plate of spaghetti, throw it up against the wall, and see what stick This is what companies that don’t have a social media marketing plan do, and it doesn’t work very well in the long run. Example two: get a high powered laser beam, focus the laser directly on one specific target market, and share highly relevant information to that market specifically. This is what companies with strategic social media marketing plans do. Not having a social media marketing plan in place, is...

Getting on page one of Google for the right keywords is the key to getting the right customers to your website. But there are quite a few steps to doing this right, which I will go through in detail below. The following is an example of how I helped a client of mine rank her small business almost on page one of Google in under one 3 weeks! She went from almost nowhere (position 83) to the top 11 for the main keyword in her industry. It has only taken about 2 and 1/2 weeks to achieve these results and it is something that is within the reach of almost any small business. One of the biggest things that made the difference is doing the right keyword research. How To Rank a Small Business Highly on Google When you are running a small business and there is so much to do just to keep things going, ranking on Google is the last thing on your mind. Not only that, but for many non-techies out there getting ranked on Google is a complete mystery. So in this quick post I want to show you the steps I took to help rank this small business in just 3 weeks. (Yes, this will vary from business to business,) The following is a chart from a tool I use called SERP Book, which tracks the ranking of sites or pages for search engines over time. It’s a great tool for tracking your rankings, or your clients (in my case). This is something you always have to watch, as it constantly changes, and shows you when you have to tweak or change...

In this post you will learn what kinds of tools the pros use to do amazing SEO, push websites to the top of Google and beat the competition. A lot of people ask us what kinds of tools we use here at Entice to help our clients reach the top of Google. SEO is awash in a sea of tools, like most areas of online marketing, so it can be a tough battle to find tools that actually work. So I have highlighted some of the best tools we use to carry out amazing SEO for ourselves and our clients. Image SEO One thing that people often forget about when it comes to SEO is their images. Google has a specific search for the web, maps, news and yes, images. So why not take advantage of that. Instead of just letting your images go to waste, why not optimize them for SEO by doing a few simple things. Firstly, make sure you optimize the file name. This should include keywords, or the words you want the image to get found for. Like: blue-boat-sunset.jpg make sure you use dashes between the words. And another important thing is to fill out the alt tag on the image html, which is easy in WordPress as they have a field for it – just look for “alt text”. Add in a description of your image here and be careful to again include important keywords. If you want an even more detailed post on SEO image optimization, then head over to a post I wrote on Mad Lemmings. BackLink & SEO Analysis Of course backlinks are...

In this post, you’ll learn 3 reasons why you may want to outsource your social media marketing. Have you ever wondered why time flies so fast, especially when you are on social media? Me too! It is officially a time vacuum. A place where you can start with the intention of only spending 5 minutes, then – Boom, an hour has passed by. Not only that, but despite all the time you spend on there, you are not seeing results either! Social Media Marketing is Flat Out Time Consuming Did you know that according to statistics found on Hubspot: The majority of marketers (59%) are using social media for 6 hours or more each week. (Social Media Examiner) Why is social media so time consuming? Finding information to post Creating information to post Responding to comments Responding to likes Thanking people for reshares … it all takes up time. Social media marketing is NOT something that you do for 15 minutes in the morning, then move onto other things for the rest of the day. Not if you want to do it right. Social media marketing takes a continuous effort, all throughout the day. Not only that, but 7 days a week as well. In social media marketing, you need to be online when your audience is online, so depending upon what part of the world your audience lives in, it can be a 24/7 effort. Social Media Marketing is Frustrating Like anything that you try, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can be frustrating and time consuming. When you’re running your own business, there’s already enough stress...

The biggest mistake you might be making right now is focusing on the wrong things in your business. How do I know? I made the same mistake when I started a few years back. I was constantly focused on getting more traffic. I want more traffic! More traffic !!! (picture Dr Evil rubbing his hands together) Traffic is great, don’t get me wrong. We all need traffic to our websites to even start getting customers. But that is not where it ends. But the problems is that only watching the traffic to your website grow can lead you to a very sad and lonely place… There Are A Lot Of Numbers, But Most of Them Are Useless When it comes to websites and online marketing we can stand and watch a whole bunch of numbers to make ourselves feel better. how much traffic I am getting how many keywords am I ranking for how many Twitter followers do I have what is my most popular post I can pull a whole bunch more from the list of useless things I used to (and sometimes still do – old habits die hard) care about. But what you have to do in business is take a good look at the numbers and understand what they mean. Even more importantly, you also have to know which numbers are the ones that matter. The ones that will drive growth in your business. These are the ones you should care about. Hint: they are the ones that leads to conversions (email signups, sales calls, products sales etc). It depends on your business and goals of course....

In this post I want to share with you how simple SEO can get results for your website. Google is scaring people away from SEO. Don’t pay any attention to them. SEO still works. In fact, I want to share with you a recent experience with a client of ours to show how some simple SEO tweaks can a big difference. SEO Gets Results When we start working with a client on SEO, one of the first things we look at is how their On Page SEO is set up. This is one of the most important things you have to have in place in order to rank on search engines like Google. What Can You Achieve To start off, we investigated what keywords our client was ranking for, and improved the On Page SEO for those blog posts. Within one month of making those changes, there was a 20% increase in Search Engine traffic. You can see in the Google Analytics chart below, that the Search Engine Traffic was pretty consistent and flat. Then, the month where our changes started rolling out, the traffic started moving up quite fast. So just by tweaking your on page SEO, you can already improve your Google traffic. What is On Page SEO? For those of you who are not familiar with all these SEO terms, let me explain. On Page SEO is the things you can set on your website that tell search engines what your site and pages/posts are about. Without giving you a complete SEO lesson, here are a few of the things you need to look at: Post Title...

In this short post, you’ll learn why it’s important that you get a social media marketing plan for your business. There are three main reasons why you want to get a social media plan together… well, there’s actually a lot more, but to keep things simple, I’ll just list three of the primary ones in bullet point format below. If you don’t have a plan, you’re going to get overwhelmed and feel like you’re lost in too much information If you don’t have a plan, you’re not going to know where you’re supposed to start and finish If you don’t have a plan, you’re not going to know what to measure your success against Social Media Can Overwhelm You Getting overwhelmed is one of the main reasons that people quit social media marketing in the first place. Have a plan about what type of content you’re going to post, as well as how often you’re going to post. Once you have your plan, stick to it. It doesn’t have to be a master plan to take over the world, just a simple and basic plan that’s going to keep you on track. Where to Start and Finish Posting on social media without a beginning and end goal in mind, is like running a foot race without knowing where the finish line is! It just doesn’t make sense. Define a starting point, as well as an end for your social media marketing efforts (or campaigns as we call them in the social media marketing world). Again, we’re not trying to sell everything to the world in one shot here, we’re simply making sure we...

In this post, you’ll learn what social media channel to use for your kind of business or blog. Different social media channels provide different types of target markets for your business. And knowing what the main differences are can help you find the right one for you. Below are a few examples and highlights of what each social media channel provides for its users. LinkedIn LinkedIn is a great place to network with like-minded business professionals, to share business information, and to connect and learn more about clients and prospects. Some great advertising opportunities also exist to get your business in front of your target market by using LinkedIns advertising options. Don’t get too bogged down with too much paid advertising, it is not always the most sustainable option. Be sure to build meaningful relationships, not just random connections with LinkedIn LIONS. Bonus: Get a Free Copy of the simple 5 step plan to social media, and learn to be successful on social today. Google+ Google+ is a very useful network to really get into in-depth conversations with some of the worlds top influencers. Google+ is a no-nonsense network where people really look to engage with each other. If you’re looking to link dump and tell the world how great your business is, Google+ is most likely not the place to do it. You will make more enemies than friends doing that. But, if you’re looking to engage and join in on enriching and meaningful conversations, than Google+ is definitely a social channel you need to take advantage of. And with it still being a relatively young platform, it is also still growing quite fast....

You’ve probably read all of the social media posts out there, and put it all into action, right? But still, you are not seeing the results you expected! There’s a lot of advice out there that just does not work, so I asked 18 experts what the worst social media advice they have heard is, and why? In this post you will find some amazing tips some unexpected gems some common mistakes advice to get you on the right track. Share it with your friends on social media, and don’t forget to thank the experts for their wisdom :> Check Out last week’s post on The Worst Blogging Advice Ever Kristi Hines The worst social media advice I have read is that you should connect with everyone who wants to connect with you, whether it’s through following back on Twitter, accepting friend requests on Facebook, or accepting invitations to connect on LinkedIn. When I started out in blogging, that’s exactly what I did – I connected with everyone. Four years down the road, I had to hire a VA to manually remove thousands of Facebook “friends” that I didn’t really know and never actually interacted with. Eventually, I’ll have to do the same with LinkedIn and Twitter. A lot depends on how you want to use each social network, but you might want to consider limiting the connections you make, especially on your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. This is due to the personal aspect of Facebook profiles, where people post photos of your kids or talk about their health, and the professional aspect of LinkedIn profiles, where people...

Wouldn’t it be great if your website could automatically generate leads for your business? It is not as crazy as you might think. Many well-tuned websites are set up in such a way that customers contact the business owner once they are ready to buy. How Does Website Lead Generation Work? There are a few steps that you need to take to get lead generation working on your website. Let’s walk through them one by one, so you see how it all works. Content Before you do anything else you have to make sure you have some content your customers want to read (or watch, if you do video). This is what usually brings them to your website in the first place, and what keeps them coming back. The idea is that your content is very useful, or helpful, and is centered around topics that relate to what you sell. This content is then promoted on social media, and any other channels you have available (email, search, paid advertising) in order to bring people to your website. So if you don’t have a blog already, I would start there. This is the foundation of your lead generation machine! Build Your Email List This is something that often takes people a while to get started on (and we waited a few months until we started ours) because they are busy working on other things (website, social media, getting customers). But you should get started on this as soon as you can, because it is one of the best things you can do to get customers. The confusing part can be...

You Just Want More Customers

At Entice, we know that the biggest problem most businesses face it getting more customers. So our goal is to use your website and drive customers there from all over the web. Using Search, Social and Advertising we will find your ideal customer and bring them to you!